“I mean to try.” Harriet spoke very slowly and softly. “I mean to show myself worthy of his Grace’s confidence.”
The elder sister smiled an involuntary admiration; there was such a calm force about the girl. “And, of course, it means that you are made for life.”
But in the eyes of Harriet was a fleck of anxiety. “Ah! you don’t know. It’s a big position—an awfully big position.”
Eliza agreed.
“There are times when it almost frightens me.” Harriet spoke half to herself.
“Everything has to run like clockwork, of course,” said the sympathetic Eliza. “And it’s bound to make the upper servants at Bridport House very jealous.”
“It may.” The deep tone had almost an edge of disdain. “Anyhow it doesn’t matter. I don’t go to Bridport House now.”
“But you can’t tell me, my dear, that they like to hear of her Grace’s second maid holding the keys in the housekeeper’s room.”
The calm Harriet smiled. “But it’s only Buntisford, after all. You speak as if it was Bridport House or Ardnaleuchan.”
Eliza shook a knowledgeable head. “They won’t like it all the same, Hattie. The dad wouldn’t have, for one. He was all his life on the estate, but he was turned fifty before he rose to be factor at Ardnaleuchan.”